Tales of the Daily Grind

Several things happen when ECPs make the decision to bring finishing (or even the entire surfacing process) in-house: wholesale lab costs and turnaround times drop, quality control increases, and the shop or practice is set up to offer a layer of patient service like never before.

What ECPs usually don’t discover until after they’ve been edging for a while, though, is that their lab will become the source of so many silly, challenging, and motivating moments.

Eyecare Business magazine checked in with three optical retailers that have businesses that rely heavily on their in-house labs and asked them to share some tales from their daily grind.

We have an edger that uses voice commands and prompts, and the machine’s voice just happens to be a Japanese woman. In keeping with our rock ‘n’ roll theme, we affectionately call her Yoko! Sometimes she appears to have very humanlike qualities.

We know it’s just a machine, but we swear she changes her voice inflection based on how much we use her that day. After a long day in which she’s processed a lot of lens jobs, Yoko can get a little tired, cranky, and slow. “Process time…six minutes, 20 seconds!”

We laugh and say, “C’mon Yoko…get it together or you’re going to break up the band!”